CALGARY – A Friday night storm caused flash floods throughout Calgary Friday night.
Fire crews were called out to nearly 50 calls, a third of those in Sunnyside where several basements were once again filling with water.
One resident saying the area has already been through so much: “We gutted every single basement on our block. Every single house got flooded. Here we are again”.
Many roads were quickly flooded and had to be closed down.
Among them, Memorial Drive east of 3rd Avenue was underwater in both the east and west bound lanes, shutting it down for some time.
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Several underpasses were also flooded.
One of the worst being at Blackfoot Trail and Ogden Road.
Some vehicles got stuck there in the fast rising water.
Emergency crews shut down the road for almost three hours.
The city blames the flash floods on a combination of conditions.
Dan Limacher, Director of City Waterworks says “The fact that the river is so high, there’s just not a lot of natural gradient to drain the water from these neighbourhoods… that combined with the fact that the groundwater is pretty saturated still, and the river is at quite a high elevation still at this time. Those factors compound to back water up into the soil and to keep the water and the soil levels quite high”.
More rain is expected this weekend.
Calgarians are being urged to use caution around collections of water, and to not attempt to drive through the pools of water as the depth can be difficult to gauge.
If you are experiencing water issues in your home related to the flash flooding, call the city’s 311 hotline.
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